How China’s Leading Banks Are Driving Global DevOps Standardization

Introduction

On May 29, 2024, the Central Cyberspace Administration, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the Information Standard Construction Action Plan (2024‑2027) , emphasizing the promotion of internationalization of information standards. The plan calls for deep participation in international standard bodies such as ISO, IEC, and ITU, converting advanced Chinese technologies into international standards and improving the alignment of national and international technical indicators.

DevOps International Standard Evaluation

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) introduced a synchronized assessment based on the ITU DevOps international standard and the domestic DevOps standard, enabling mutual recognition of standards. The international DevOps assessment has been upgraded in scope, certification, and reporting, serving as a key method to implement the Action Plan’s goal of standard internationalization.

Standard 2 – Agile Development Management

China Agricultural Bank became the first state‑owned bank to pass two agile development assessments, focusing on data‑center portal construction and user‑behavior data collection platforms. The data‑center portal serves as the unified entry for the bank’s next‑generation big‑data system, supporting over 1.4 million data assets and enabling intelligent marketing, risk control, operations, and decision‑making. The user‑behavior platform (“Yinghuo”) captures multi‑channel data across Android, iOS, H5, mini‑programs, and web, achieving billions of daily data points with sub‑second processing.

Improvements include halving the requirement delivery cycle, reducing defect‑fix time to under one day, and raising user satisfaction above 99%.

Standard 3 – Continuous Delivery

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) highlighted the e‑Life platform and an AI‑driven investment advisory system. Both projects adopted a strong DevOps culture, built a dedicated continuous delivery platform, and integrated toolchains to lower learning costs and improve stability.

China Agricultural Bank completed two batches of twelve projects, demonstrating significant efficiency gains, such as 90%+ build success rates, automated deployment, and rapid iteration cycles.

Bank of Communications delivered cross‑border finance and smart HR projects, achieving over 90% automated build success, more than five daily builds, 100% interface test coverage, and sub‑hour integration repair times.

Postal Savings Bank of China passed three projects in a single attempt, covering front‑end, back‑end, and risk‑management domains, with achievements like 90%+ build and deployment success, 65%+ unit‑test coverage, and pipeline repair times under 30 minutes.

Standard 4 – Technical Operation

China Agricultural Bank implemented a distributed core control system (OSC) that acts as the gateway for the bank’s distributed core, providing security checks, routing, logging, and traffic governance for high‑throughput transactions.

Other projects, such as the online payment platform and third‑party quick‑payment module, enhanced configuration management, monitoring, and user‑experience capabilities, achieving 100% configuration completeness and over 90% event‑monitoring detection rates.

Standard 5 – Application Design

China Agricultural Bank migrated distributed client‑information services to the cloud using micro‑service architecture, establishing a multi‑active disaster‑recovery system that supports real‑time client data access across the entire bank.

Standard 6 – Security and Risk Management (DevSecOps)

ICBC applied the DevSecOps standard to its mobile banking app, covering organizational responsibilities, tool maintenance, threat modeling, and open‑source component analysis, thereby strengthening end‑to‑end security.

China Agricultural Bank passed four projects, including mobile banking payment settlement and micro‑loan platforms, achieving a 42.7% reduction in high‑risk business‑logic vulnerabilities.

Bank of China and Postal Savings Bank also passed DevSecOps assessments, reporting significant drops in security‑related defects and faster remediation.

Standard 8 – System and Tools

ICBC launched a DevOps cloud platform that unifies CI/CD, quality management, and security controls, increasing build success by 11% and reducing average build time from six to three minutes.

Jianxin Financial Technology introduced the Yaoguang Agile Development Platform , offering collaborative development, DevOps toolchains, low‑code development, and performance metrics, improving pipeline robustness and code readability.

China Agricultural Bank deployed the EMS efficiency management system, providing end‑to‑end pipeline orchestration for over 500 users.

Standard 9 – BizDevOps

ICBC became the first national bank to pass the BizDevOps assessment, establishing a value‑driven, fully automated delivery process that quantifies and maximizes product value, with measurable improvements in conversion rates and development cycles.

Standard 11 – Continuous Testing

China Agricultural Bank passed the Continuous Testing (CT) level‑3 assessment for two projects, enhancing test design, automation coverage, and feedback loops, resulting in a 99% reduction in technical debt and accelerated release cycles.

Postal Savings Bank of China also achieved level‑3 CT certification for enterprise mobile banking and project‑fund monitoring systems, reporting significant automation gains and shortened testing timelines.

International DevOps Standards

The ITU‑T Y.3525 standard, titled “Cloud Computing – Requirements for cloud service development and operation management,” was approved in 2020, providing a global framework for cloud‑based DevOps practices.

Domestically, the “R&D‑Operations Integrated (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” was authored by CAICT together with leading internet and financial enterprises, and has been adopted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for widespread evaluation.

Contact Information

For DevOps standard evaluation inquiries, contact CAICT (Zhang Jianyi, phone 158 1031 7021, email [email protected]) or the Efficient Operations Community (Wei Huanxin, phone 185 0025 5645, email [email protected]).